The DOI matches its Crossref record; 12 of the 12 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Energy requirements and carbon emissions for a low-carbon energy transition
Open accessAbstract
Achieving the Paris Agreement will require massive deployment of low-carbon energy. However, constructing, operating, and maintaining a low-carbon energy system will itself require energy, with much of it derived from fossil fuels. This raises the concern that the transition may consume much of the energy available to society, and be a source of considerable emissions. Here we calculate the energy requirements and emissions associated with the global energy system in fourteen mitigation pathways compatible with 1.5 °C of warming. We find that the initial push for a transition is likely to cause a 10–34% decline in net energy available to society. Moreover, we find that the carbon emissions associated with the transition to a low-carbon energy system are substantial, ranging from 70 to 395 GtCO 2 (with a cross-scenario average of 195 GtCO 2). The share of carbon emissions for the energy system will increase from 10% today to 27% in 2050, and in some cases may take up all remaining emissions available to society under 1.5 °C pathways.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Net-zero emissions energy systems
Davis, S. J., Lewis, N. S., Shaner, M., Aggarwal, S., Arent, D., Azevedo, I. L., Benson, S. M., Bradley, T., Brouwer, J., Chiang, Y.-M., et al. (2018) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aas9793 · Cited by 2,391
Scenarios towards limiting global mean temperature increase below 1.5 °C
Rogelj, J., Popp, A., Calvin, K. V., Luderer, G., Emmerling, J., Gernaat, D., Fujimori, S., Strefler, J., Hasegawa, T., Marangoni, G., et al. (2018) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/s41558-018-0091-3 · Cited by 1,341
Grubler, A., Wilson, C., Bento, N., Boza-Kiss, B., Krey, V., McCollum, D. L., Rao, N. D., Riahi, K., Rogelj, J., De Stercke, S., et al. (2018) · Nature Energy · doi:10.1038/s41560-018-0172-6 · Cited by 1,178
Fossil-fueled development (SSP5): An energy and resource intensive scenario for the 21st century
Kriegler, E., Bauer, N., Popp, A., Humpenöder, F., Leimbach, M., Strefler, J., Baumstark, L., Bodirsky, B. L., Hilaire, J., Klein, D., et al. (2017) · Global Environmental Change · doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.05.015 · Cited by 735
Can BECCS deliver sustainable and resource efficient negative emissions?
Fajardy, M., & Mac Dowell, N. (2017) · Energy & Environmental Science · doi:10.1039/c7ee00465f · Cited by 392
Land-use emissions play a critical role in land-based mitigation for Paris climate targets
Harper, A. B., Powell, T., Cox, P. M., House, J., Huntingford, C., Lenton, T. M., Sitch, S., Burke, E., Chadburn, S. E., Collins, W. J., et al. (2018) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-018-05340-z · Cited by 335
Biomass-based negative emissions difficult to reconcile with planetary boundaries
Heck, V., Gerten, D., Lucht, W., & Popp, A. (2018) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/s41558-017-0064-y · Cited by 334
The climate change mitigation potential of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage
Hanssen, S. V., Daioglou, V., Steinmann, Z. J. N., Doelman, J. C., Van Vuuren, D. P., & Huijbregts, M. A. J. (2020) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/s41558-020-0885-y · Cited by 301
Jacobson, M. Z., Delucchi, M. A., Cameron, M. A., & Mathiesen, B. V. (2018) · Renewable Energy · doi:10.1016/j.renene.2018.02.009 · Cited by 286
The mutual dependence of negative emission technologies and energy systems
Creutzig, F., Breyer, C., Hilaire, J., Minx, J., Peters, G. P., & Socolow, R. (2019) · Energy & Environmental Science · doi:10.1039/c8ee03682a · Cited by 217
Cited by
Osman, A. I., Chen, Z., Elgarahy, A. M., Farghali, M., Mohamed, I. M. A., Priya, A. K., Hawash, H. B., & Yap, P. (2024) · Advanced Energy and Sustainability Research · doi:10.1002/aesr.202400011 · Cited by 365
Post-growth: the science of wellbeing within planetary boundaries
Kallis, G., Hickel, J., O’Neill, D. W., Jackson, T., Victor, P. A., Raworth, K., Schor, J. B., Steinberger, J. K., & Ürge-Vorsatz, D. (2025) · The Lancet Planetary Health · doi:10.1016/s2542-5196(24)00310-3 · Cited by 261
Self-citationZhou, Y. (2024) · Journal of Energy Storage · doi:10.1016/j.est.2024.113688 · Cited by 42
Metadata
- Authors
- Slameršak, A., Kallis, G., & O’Neill, D. W.
- Venue
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2022-11-14
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 6932-6932
- ISSN
- 2041-1723 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4308995507
- Cited by
- 297
- References
- 12
- FWCI
- 44.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Energy requirements and carbon emissions for a low-carbon energy transition. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/s41467-022-33976-5
- The paper
- Slameršak, A., Kallis, G., & O’Neill, D. W. (2022). Energy requirements and carbon emissions for a low-carbon energy transition. Nature Communications. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-33976-5
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.